Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff from the Science Lab from how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey guys, welcome to the podcast. This
Speaker 1: is Alison I don't know if the science editor how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. And this is Robert Lamb, science
Speaker 1: writer at how stuff works dot com. And in this episode,
Speaker 1: we've got monsters um. More specifically, we have bouts, battles,
Speaker 1: um fights, um coral skirmishes between monsters and science. And
Speaker 1: I mean actual science um as opposed to kind. Right,
Speaker 1: this is what we're not talking about science fiction here,
Speaker 1: as awesome science fiction is. We're talking about actual um
Speaker 1: published scientific studies that deal with various fictional monsters. UM.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna end include such bouts as the sad
Speaker 1: Squatch versus the werewolf, UM, physicist versus ghost and vampires. Well,
Speaker 1: that's that's what I'm That one's kind of a tag
Speaker 1: teammate because I think it's technically like physicists and mathematicians
Speaker 1: against ghost and vampires. And then the final bout is
Speaker 1: going to be Robert Smith versus zombies. We're not talking
Speaker 1: about the curius Robert Smith, you know, the different Robert Smith.
Speaker 1: Although now I'm gonna I'm gonna have a cure song.
Speaker 1: Playing in my head the whole podcast. Well, that's a
Speaker 1: that's a good problem to have, alright, So let's kick
Speaker 1: it off. First, battle Sasquatch versus Werewolves. Tell me a
Speaker 1: little about the Sasquatch. You're familiar with the big Foot? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the reportings of sasquatch sighting in North Georgia Mountains a
Speaker 1: while back, Right, Yeah, there was those guys that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the fixtures were pretty hilarious. Yeah, most pictures of Bigfoot
Speaker 1: are pretty hilarious because they're pretty fake or they're just
Speaker 1: just abysmal quality. Um. And he goes by many names
Speaker 1: old Bigfoot again's Sasquatch, bigfoot, Yettie, one of my it's
Speaker 1: the Skunk Cape if you live in Florida. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I noticed you wrote a couple of other ones down
Speaker 1: here that I've not heard of, and perhaps you listeners
Speaker 1: haven't heard of. Yeah, Like, how about why don't you
Speaker 1: pronounce them? Robberts? Heard of the wind to go right,
Speaker 1: I've not heard the window. Oh man, the window goes off.
Speaker 1: The window goes off and tied and like, um, sort
Speaker 1: of like cannibalism myths, and I think it comes out
Speaker 1: of various Native American traditions. Um, but it is also
Speaker 1: like an X Men character and stuff. I think it
Speaker 1: was in a Stephen King book. But anyway, then there's
Speaker 1: also the yehoa, the oma, the rugaru and uh and
Speaker 1: the box b o q s. So depending on who's
Speaker 1: describing this guy, he runs any who are between seven
Speaker 1: and fifteen ft tall. Um. He's extremely hairy, surprisingly hard
Speaker 1: to capture on film, and despite having been uh uh
Speaker 1: you know reported for centuries. Um, you know, we haven't
Speaker 1: managed to catch one and put one in a zoo
Speaker 1: or anything. And he walks on two legs, right, he
Speaker 1: can have a little bit of a strong odor to him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of reports of him smelling like
Speaker 1: you don't really smelling before you see him. And uh yeah.
Speaker 1: So in this corner, a pretty rough and tumble character. Umquat. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In the other corner we have the werewolf. Now, what
Speaker 1: comes to mind when you think of a werewolf? I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at you and you're you're kind of growing
Speaker 1: a beard. So I'm imagining that beard kind of growing
Speaker 1: and then hair sprouting on the knuckles. And but it
Speaker 1: would work better if you didn't have blonde hair. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you don't see very many. You see white werewolves, I guess,
Speaker 1: but not, I mean you see them in fiction, not
Speaker 1: around town. Do you think a little bit of chebacca
Speaker 1: when I tend to think of where I guess, But
Speaker 1: but that's not really quite what I'm when I'm after,
Speaker 1: what do you think of? Well, I mean, it varies,
Speaker 1: you have I want it kind of depends on the
Speaker 1: budget of the film that you're watching, because werewolves can
Speaker 1: can sometimes just be like trained wolves, like people who
Speaker 1: watch True Blood right now, I've been seeing kind of
Speaker 1: like semi trained wolves running around as the werewolves. And
Speaker 1: then you have for the whole like Lawn Cheney junior
Speaker 1: werewolves where it was like a dude with a bunch
Speaker 1: of fake hair stuck on his face. Kind that's my favorite,
Speaker 1: that's my favorite kind of werewolf. Yeah. And then sometimes
Speaker 1: like computers allow us to do something awkward in between
Speaker 1: that doesn't really work. Um, but yeah, they're a normal
Speaker 1: man by day. And then what turns them into a
Speaker 1: wolf A full moon? Right, they suffer from lacanthropy. Uh,
Speaker 1: And this was the one. The legends for this has
Speaker 1: been around for like seemingly forever. I mean, you have
Speaker 1: people turning into wolves as early as the epic of Gilgamesh,
Speaker 1: you know, one of the earliest known works of literature,
Speaker 1: and now we have been Harry Potter. That's right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the Harry Potter is full. When you can't throw a
Speaker 1: stick without hitting a werewolf these days. So so what
Speaker 1: do you think who's gonna win between in a battle
Speaker 1: between a big foot, between a you know, sasquatch, a yetie,
Speaker 1: and a werewolf. Well, I think on either ends you
Speaker 1: have a lot of Harry brawn, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: give it to sasquatch just for sheer muscle, muscled strength,
Speaker 1: and uh, the werewolf, I'm thinking quickness, you know, agile,
Speaker 1: laid on its feet kind of the um what is
Speaker 1: what is that famous fighting quote, sting like a yeah, um,
Speaker 1: fly like a butterfly, sting like a b. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I'm thinking that famous fighting quote, you know, fly
Speaker 1: like a butterfly, sting like a b yeah. Well okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: and also yeah, but then of course the sasquatch has
Speaker 1: kind of got this kind of peaceful, uh you know
Speaker 1: thing going for him, like people kind of see that
Speaker 1: the bigfoot is a as a as a pacifist in
Speaker 1: the werewolf is a bloodthirsty killer. So, uh well, the
Speaker 1: outcome for this bout, according to Brian Regal, assistant professor
Speaker 1: of the history of science at Keene University in Union,
Speaker 1: New Jersey, sasquatch wins. But get this, he wins through
Speaker 1: interference from Charles Darwin. Really, how does Darwin figure into this? Well? Um,
Speaker 1: Regal's argument here is that you know, you had in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty nine Darwin published The Origin Species and all that, right,
Speaker 1: and the big take home from from all of this
Speaker 1: that everybody just ran nuts within the media was the
Speaker 1: connection between man and ape, all right, and you as
Speaker 1: we're going too in the How Charles Darwin Works article
Speaker 1: which you wrote, which which I wrote, Uh, there's um,
Speaker 1: you know, but like people just really lashed into them
Speaker 1: with all these like cruel cartoons of like, you know,
Speaker 1: how dare this man, you know, say that the noble
Speaker 1: uh you know, refined human, this child of God is
Speaker 1: in any way you know, related to these you know,
Speaker 1: bestial creatures that wander around naked and Harry you know, so, um,
Speaker 1: it was a pretty shock. We can't go any farther
Speaker 1: because I just have to say it bothers me. This
Speaker 1: whole you know, progression, this thought of evolution of uh
Speaker 1: you know, leading from directly from uh an ape to
Speaker 1: to man. And and of course we've written a lot
Speaker 1: about this, and we know that this is not true.
Speaker 1: They evolve along too divergent lines with some sort of
Speaker 1: common ancestors exactly, just to clear that up. And and
Speaker 1: here's the here's the key though, the like the last
Speaker 1: common ancestor between man and ape not too terribly far
Speaker 1: in the few in the past. I mean yes, like
Speaker 1: a long time in the past, like five million years
Speaker 1: or like five million years or so. But the last
Speaker 1: common ancestor between a man and wolf. Guess when that
Speaker 1: would have would have occurred? Um, all right, it was
Speaker 1: a It was the hand. It was a hundred million
Speaker 1: years ago. Now can you guess what kind of animal
Speaker 1: it would have been? Um, I'm guessing Robert held me out.
Speaker 1: It would have been something like an art vark. It
Speaker 1: would have been an art Where did you pull this
Speaker 1: out of there? There was a study a couple we
Speaker 1: just back. Some some scientists have said that you have
Speaker 1: been a hundred million years ago, like and not just
Speaker 1: between man and wolves, between like a varying number of
Speaker 1: a million species. But but yeah, so we're a lot
Speaker 1: more kin to the to the apes than we are
Speaker 1: to the wolves. So so yeah, Darwin's theory gets a
Speaker 1: lot of traction. It's kind of like seeps into people's
Speaker 1: minds and suddenly the idea of turning into a wolf
Speaker 1: is it's very far removed. It's kind of it's far removed.
Speaker 1: It's a lot sillier. Yeah, it's it's it's kind of silly.
Speaker 1: While while the idea of this connection between man and
Speaker 1: ape is a it's a lot more a lot it's
Speaker 1: still ridiculous, but it's a lot more plausible that a
Speaker 1: man can turn into an ape. And also, um, it's
Speaker 1: kind of troubling. I mean, you see horror stories from
Speaker 1: the day, like, uh, you know, stuff from HP Lovecraft,
Speaker 1: Sir rather Conan Doyle, um Edgar Allan Poe dealing with like,
Speaker 1: you know, either people turning into apes or being murdered
Speaker 1: by apes or mating with apes. It's the love Craft one, um,
Speaker 1: Planet of the Apes, none of that later. But in
Speaker 1: a way that's foun off of the same thing. You know,
Speaker 1: there's people pondering this connection between you know, what we
Speaker 1: are and what we think we are and uh, and
Speaker 1: ore you know, evolutionary kin. So the takeaway is really, um,
Speaker 1: you know, science playing a role actually in our fears,
Speaker 1: you know, to illuminate or to define our our fears
Speaker 1: and the things that we don't understand. I guess would
Speaker 1: you take in that direction? Yeah, I mean it's like
Speaker 1: the where thing and the and the bigfoot thing to
Speaker 1: a certain extent, and also like these other ideas of
Speaker 1: like wild men in the forest that have been when
Speaker 1: this forever like it's they're all ultimately about coming to
Speaker 1: terms with our own bestial nature. And it's kind of
Speaker 1: like the inner monster, you know. In fact, one fact
Speaker 1: that I always find really amusing is that the word
Speaker 1: monstrosity itself comes from the word um monstrary. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I may be pronouncing that wrong, but it means to
Speaker 1: show or illustrate a point. You know. You look back
Speaker 1: in medieval text and you see, you know a lot
Speaker 1: of thought went into monsters, like why does it have
Speaker 1: the head of this and the head of that? Um,
Speaker 1: there was like there was I remember seeing some illustration
Speaker 1: of like a birdman. He was like he was like
Speaker 1: I want to say, it was like it was supposed
Speaker 1: to be like Jesus, but with a bird's head with
Speaker 1: a really long neck. I've not seen that illustration. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's there were a lot of crazy illustrations back there.
Speaker 1: But the idea was that like, uh, the like the
Speaker 1: like a really christ like individual, very holy individual. And
Speaker 1: what was the bird connection. The bird connection is that, um,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a huge distance between the heart and
Speaker 1: the mouth, so that any kind of like harsh words
Speaker 1: that would rise up, they would have longer to travel
Speaker 1: and you'd have more time to think about them before
Speaker 1: you express yourself. So you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: symbolism in it all. But but yeah, that's an important
Speaker 1: thing to think about when when contemplating um our relationship
Speaker 1: with any fictional monster, what does that monster represent, um,
Speaker 1: you know, to us and all of us. And then
Speaker 1: you get anthropologists such as Ernestine mq and she's a
Speaker 1: cultural anthropologist from Rochester, and she says that a lot
Speaker 1: of people are really disenchanted with everyday life. Um, they
Speaker 1: long for something that seems kind of magical. Yeah, Like
Speaker 1: she points out that even Halloween, which I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: still excited about, you know, it's coming up here around
Speaker 1: the corner, but she points out it's like a day
Speaker 1: for kids. Now, there's nothing scary about Halloween and uh,
Speaker 1: and so big Foot for a lot of people is
Speaker 1: just one thing you could you could sort of hold
Speaker 1: on to. You know, it hasn't No one can say
Speaker 1: you've completely you know, you can't say there are no
Speaker 1: big Foot like a big big feet, no big foots
Speaker 1: out there. Um, you know, you know completely. Someone could
Speaker 1: always make the case, well, you know they're hiding here
Speaker 1: or there and nobody's proved you know that they exist either,
Speaker 1: Like I remember when that thing with the guys in
Speaker 1: the Georgia Mountains with a with a cooler with a
Speaker 1: monkey suit in it, when that first hit um, and
Speaker 1: that the news of it to hit, I felt this
Speaker 1: like real excitement and you know rise up in me.
Speaker 1: You know, they're like, oh my goodness, or is this
Speaker 1: going to be the day that we actually find out
Speaker 1: there's the such thing as big Foot? And then on
Speaker 1: the other hand, I also felt like this fear's like
Speaker 1: what what if it? You know, what if it turns
Speaker 1: out that it does exist, that will be like this
Speaker 1: one remaining mystery of the world that we've managed to
Speaker 1: snuff away forever. I don't know. I think the skeptics
Speaker 1: argument is no way. We we got nothing to to
Speaker 1: go on here. So I mean, sasquatch or big foot
Speaker 1: is a is a pretty interesting and fun idea to
Speaker 1: play with. But yeah, we really literally don't have much.
Speaker 1: But apparently the groups that are really into them have
Speaker 1: been growing like wildfire. Yeah, so we're gonna of this
Speaker 1: victory to sasquatch, Sasquatch over the werewolf by means of
Speaker 1: Charles Darwin. Sasquatching science take the win. Sorry, werewolves. All right,
Speaker 1: So on the bout two we have a physicist and
Speaker 1: mathematicians taken on ghosts and vampires. Tell me what you
Speaker 1: think of when you think of ghosts, um, Casper, Casper Casper,
Speaker 1: the friendly ghost, polter Geist? Yeah, what else? Well, of
Speaker 1: course Patrick Swayze, oh right, Patrick Swayze and Denny Moore
Speaker 1: and uh that whole scene where they're sculpting that piece.
Speaker 1: And Jacob Marley. Jacob Marley is a famous and in
Speaker 1: a lot of these cases, you know, you also think
Speaker 1: of floating, you know, I'm definitely moving around and often
Speaker 1: going through walls, a favorite trick among ghosts. Yes, and vampires,
Speaker 1: of course, yeah, they like just like your blood, That's
Speaker 1: what they're renowned for they're pretty pretty strong. I gotta
Speaker 1: I gotta say, from a purely practical point of view,
Speaker 1: that seems I mean, sucking blood. I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty nutrient rich. You could you could do less intelligent
Speaker 1: things as a fantastic being. Yeah, take the leech for instance,
Speaker 1: which we covered recently in a podcast. Those guys get
Speaker 1: along just fine on the blood um, but they're not
Speaker 1: as sexy as the vampires that fill our television screens
Speaker 1: these days. Yeah, I have. So have you seen any
Speaker 1: of this true Blood or read that fictional Now? I
Speaker 1: haven't read it, but I've watched it. Yeah. Alright, Well,
Speaker 1: and then there's the whole series, the Twilight series. Have
Speaker 1: you seen that? I have? I have watched them. Nice,
Speaker 1: I got there with that on the podcast. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: with I watched them with a riff track going, so
Speaker 1: it was like they're they're being spoofed a little. But yeah.
Speaker 1: So let's for the purposes of this, let's imagine a
Speaker 1: physicist and mathematician in one corner, and in the other
Speaker 1: corner m Edward the vampire from Twilight and Patrick Swayzy
Speaker 1: the ghost. All right, who's gonna win which team? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go with the physicists and mathematicians. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I mean, I'm not really thinking of these
Speaker 1: guys as particularly skilled in hand to hand combat. I
Speaker 1: don't think that they're you know, they have their black
Speaker 1: belt by any means. But the wits, the wits will
Speaker 1: outsmart these beings. And and here's the here's the thing,
Speaker 1: the the paper in question, which is cinema fiction versus
Speaker 1: physical reality. Yeah, let's back the sepe with scientific research,
Speaker 1: why don't. Yeah, it comes from our tow you know,
Speaker 1: people in the physicist corner being so Hong Gandhi and
Speaker 1: his mentor and professor uh Costas Femi. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: he sounds like a Greek guy. Yeah, and they're from
Speaker 1: what they may be Greek, but they're hanging out in
Speaker 1: Florida at the University of Central Florida. Well, the professor
Speaker 1: being Greek, I think the other one was not necessarily Greek. Yes, anyway,
Speaker 1: that's it. We're diverged. So anyway, here these are the
Speaker 1: guys that wrote the study, and like right out of
Speaker 1: the gate, their first um, their first argument pretty much
Speaker 1: takes the ghost out of the equation because they basically
Speaker 1: say that all right, So a ghost by its very
Speaker 1: nature is not supposed to take up space. It has
Speaker 1: no mass, right, um. But to move forward, a ghost
Speaker 1: would have to be capable of producing force downward, you know,
Speaker 1: in this case, through feet or something you know. Um,
Speaker 1: But to go through a wall, a ghost would have
Speaker 1: to be immaterial. See. So it's like you can't have
Speaker 1: it both ways. Either either the ghosts it takes you know,
Speaker 1: has mass and takes up space and can move, or
Speaker 1: it's in material and can go through walls. So their
Speaker 1: argument is that ghosts, as typically betrayed in cinema, just
Speaker 1: cannot happen. So it would be either So in this
Speaker 1: fictional battle, which I like to think is taking place
Speaker 1: inside boxing or wrestling ring, Patrick Swayze would either be
Speaker 1: you know, moving through the ring and through the ropes,
Speaker 1: or he'll just be standing there. Okay, so we've taken well,
Speaker 1: I mean, we've only knocked out ghosts in one regard
Speaker 1: in that we've we've knocked out a method of look
Speaker 1: emotion that true, pretty much a method of moving around
Speaker 1: the world. Right. Well, I think basically they're saying the
Speaker 1: ghost could move or the ghosts could go through walls.
Speaker 1: But you can't have it both ways. Yeah, so, and
Speaker 1: you could argue, well, that doesn't really say that ghosts
Speaker 1: don't exist, and when they're not really making there even,
Speaker 1: they're just saying the ghost has betrayed that they can't
Speaker 1: have it both ways from a physics standpoint, Alright, sorry,
Speaker 1: what about vampires? How are they faring in this whole battle? Well,
Speaker 1: vampire for vampires, they come down to they reduce it
Speaker 1: to a pretty simple argument, like what happens when you
Speaker 1: get bit by a vampire in something? In some versions
Speaker 1: of the myth, I turned into a vampire, right, And
Speaker 1: it's a little more complicated in some versions, but they're
Speaker 1: going with become a half vampire? Do I become a
Speaker 1: half vampire? No? No, no, let's just say you become
Speaker 1: a vampire. And again this is vaire. Yeah, do you
Speaker 1: get you get bit by a vampire, you become a vampire.
Speaker 1: And a lot of people say that doesn't make sense
Speaker 1: just from a mathematics standpoint, Well, because they deplete their
Speaker 1: food supply to rapidly, right, and they'd eventually just start
Speaker 1: to death because it wouldn't be anything left to eat
Speaker 1: or to drain. Uh. And it's the it's something called
Speaker 1: the mathematical principle of geometric progression. I see, yeah, and
Speaker 1: they say, would say that it would play out about
Speaker 1: like this, two point two point five years after like
Speaker 1: a one vampire arrives on the scene, all of humanity
Speaker 1: would be wiped out. Those are some hungry vampires. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it get he breaks down to, like, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's like you have a vampire feed once a month
Speaker 1: and then you know there are two more vampires. It's
Speaker 1: it's it's just it just gives, it just gives exponential growth.
Speaker 1: And uh and yeah, so it reminds me of this
Speaker 1: question of the day that I just edited on. The
Speaker 1: Malthfeustian premise is an English economist named Thomas Malthis who
Speaker 1: was active in the nineteenth century. Since um, since did
Speaker 1: unless he's a vampire, which case he's still living. No,
Speaker 1: But Mauthis was saying that his he had this premise
Speaker 1: in which it was pretty simple. He stated that humanity
Speaker 1: and its current rate of growth would outstrip the food
Speaker 1: supply because while humanity, while humans grow in an exponential fashion,
Speaker 1: the rate of food production only grows linearly. Anyway, a
Speaker 1: little bit of a tangent, but kind of on the
Speaker 1: same thread. Well, it's worth pointing out that as as
Speaker 1: as much as our physicist and mathematician here may may
Speaker 1: celebrate this perceived victory over the vampire. Um, not every
Speaker 1: version of the vampire myth entails people coming back to life,
Speaker 1: like some um, some versions of it involved like you
Speaker 1: have to drink the blood of the vampire to become
Speaker 1: the vampire. And then there are a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: like really crazy vampire myths out there that Hollywood ignores
Speaker 1: because it's too awesome. Like seriously, look up in Vucci
Speaker 1: and it's like one of the just crazy awesome Native
Speaker 1: American I think vampire myths where it's like a giant
Speaker 1: blood bladder that lives in a cave underwater and like
Speaker 1: sends out minions to collect people. It's crazy stuff. But
Speaker 1: and then, and then I think there have been a
Speaker 1: vampire movies, and and what's the fiction that explore the
Speaker 1: idea that vampires would have to discipline themselves in order
Speaker 1: to keep their food supply intact? Yeah, actually, I mean
Speaker 1: you wouldn't think that vampires would be dumb beasts, so
Speaker 1: they would have some mechanism of you know, kin selection
Speaker 1: keeping themselves alive Survival of the Fittest. But so I
Speaker 1: guess when you come down to its science, like firmly
Speaker 1: wallops both both ghosts and vampires, it does victory science.
Speaker 1: So I think the score is scientists to monster zero.
Speaker 1: All right, let's take on our final battle. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then this one is going to involve zombies. So what
Speaker 1: comes to mind when when someone mentions zombies? Most recently
Speaker 1: the British film what is it Sean Sean of the Dead? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that one. Yeah, that's a that's a fun zombie film
Speaker 1: that features the more classic slow zombies. I think I
Speaker 1: will eliminate us, me and listeners on the a kind
Speaker 1: of zombies out there. Well basically, I mean you are
Speaker 1: slow zombies and they're fast onmbies. Basically, I think dichotomy.
Speaker 1: There it is, and some people get really been out
Speaker 1: of shape over, including Simon peg Star of a shot
Speaker 1: of the Dead. Um, because you have the classic sort
Speaker 1: of George Romero, um, you know, version of the zombie
Speaker 1: that shambles along and as you know, it's just like
Speaker 1: you know, you know, and they're generally generally the threat
Speaker 1: is that there are just lots and lots of them,
Speaker 1: and if you you'll and if you don't stay on
Speaker 1: your feet and you know, think, then suddenly you'll find
Speaker 1: yourself in a situation where you can't escape them. But
Speaker 1: along the way you ended up getting some like fast zombie. Um. Um.
Speaker 1: Movies come into play, like, uh, I think, yeah, Return
Speaker 1: of the Living Dead I think had fast zombies brought
Speaker 1: by the reanimator. Movies had past zombies. And then most
Speaker 1: notably Twenty eight days Later, the which is a big
Speaker 1: hit out of Britain, and that one had fast zombies. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so people get get really really been out of
Speaker 1: shape over it because people are like Tomby should never
Speaker 1: be fast and and the zombies and twenty eight days
Speaker 1: Later aren't technically zombies. They're actually people infected with the disease.
Speaker 1: And but but anyway, for for all intents and purposes,
Speaker 1: in this podcast, we're talking about slow zombies. Yeah. I'm
Speaker 1: with that. Let's stay true to be the old stereotype. Yeah. So, um,
Speaker 1: who do we have let's set it up. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: have Robert Smith and this is the interest. It's like
Speaker 1: I said, it's not the guy with the you mean
Speaker 1: that instantly comes to mind, the lead singer of the
Speaker 1: Cure Um. Did you like the cure when you were
Speaker 1: younger or do you like the cure? Now I have
Speaker 1: to ask. I didn't. I did, wasn't really into the
Speaker 1: cure when I was younger, but I I dig some
Speaker 1: cure here and there now you know. But but this
Speaker 1: guy is a Canadian researcher. In his name is Robert
Speaker 1: Smith question mark, like his legal last name is Smith
Speaker 1: question Mark. And I would like to be louder milk
Speaker 1: exclamation point. You should go for it. And this guy
Speaker 1: is just one of several researchers that to put out
Speaker 1: this study called when Zombies Attack exclamation Point colon Mathematical
Speaker 1: Modeling of an Outbreak of Zombie and Action, and that
Speaker 1: was published in Infectious Disease Modeling Research Progress. All right,
Speaker 1: so he's definitely one of the top tier academic journals
Speaker 1: out there. Well, um, and this comes down like we're
Speaker 1: talking with the vampires. What happens when you get bit
Speaker 1: by a zombie? In most films, you turn into a zombie,
Speaker 1: right right, like generally within you know, thirty minutes of
Speaker 1: screen time. I'm sorry, guys, I'm not as much of
Speaker 1: a horror officionado as Robert. I know that's one. It's
Speaker 1: fun to quiz you on these things, um, because you know,
Speaker 1: but but yes, the most folks go ahead, No, no, no,
Speaker 1: it's just I mean I enjoy hearing like a more
Speaker 1: of a mainstream um like less, let's just keep going
Speaker 1: with the zombies, okay. So um so yeah, the ideas
Speaker 1: that zombies bought you. You turn into a zombie and
Speaker 1: it's kind of like with the vampire thing. It's like,
Speaker 1: how soon would this situation get way out of control?
Speaker 1: So these guys approached it from an infectious disease modeling standpoint.
Speaker 1: They said, all right, let's assume you know X, Y,
Speaker 1: and Z about a zombie outbreak, and then let's do
Speaker 1: the math. What would happen? And uh and what what
Speaker 1: did they find? We're kind of doomed. Yeah, it win
Speaker 1: zombies attack. So if you to predict the scenario of
Speaker 1: a true zombie attacked, this pretty much means a rapid
Speaker 1: collapse of civilization as we know it. Cities would fall
Speaker 1: in mirror days. Yeah, unless we hit them hard and
Speaker 1: hit them often. And that is an actual quote I
Speaker 1: believe from the paper. Yeah. They they broke it down
Speaker 1: into a few different possible outcomes, and let's talk about
Speaker 1: the first one they laid out was latent infection, and
Speaker 1: then this humans have about a week before being wiped
Speaker 1: out by zombies. And the next step would be quarantine.
Speaker 1: And so even if they were to be lucky enough
Speaker 1: to sequester they infected away from the general population, it's
Speaker 1: going to do not a whole heck of a lot
Speaker 1: to stop the outbreak. So humans only have eight days
Speaker 1: to live. It's dire scenario. And then the next scenario
Speaker 1: they they came up with was one that entailed a cure,
Speaker 1: like we would have able to develop a cure for
Speaker 1: zombie hood. Then then humans would survive, but only barely.
Speaker 1: And this is interesting because I was just talking to
Speaker 1: a buddy of mine about the latest zombie game to
Speaker 1: come out on all the system, or at least on
Speaker 1: the three sixty. It's African what it's called, but anyway,
Speaker 1: it entails a cure for zombies. So it's like a
Speaker 1: zomb post apocalyptic zombie thing. But then there's also a cure,
Speaker 1: but you have to take it every day to keep
Speaker 1: from turning into a zombie. Yeah, and we all know
Speaker 1: how effective cures that people have to take every day
Speaker 1: are not very well well, I mean no, that is
Speaker 1: a problem. You prescribe a therapy that is, and it's
Speaker 1: it's troublesome. Yeah. Well, if you if you get if
Speaker 1: you have a limb transplant or any kind of a transplant,
Speaker 1: you have to take medication for the rest of your life. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm just saying that it can be tricky for people
Speaker 1: to actually follow the prescribe therapy. And if it's in
Speaker 1: a horror movie or a horror game, you know it's
Speaker 1: not going to go right. You're gonna reach a situation
Speaker 1: where it's like, oh my goodness, if I got my pills,
Speaker 1: I'm turning into a zombie. Um, some people have that
Speaker 1: problem in real life. Um, so what's the what's the
Speaker 1: final The final scenario is eradication. So we like this
Speaker 1: one the most, at least as non zombies do, and
Speaker 1: that entails a four pinpointed attacks. But over ten days
Speaker 1: and all the zombies are destroyed. Humans prevail. Robert Smith prevails,
Speaker 1: but that's hit him hard and hit him often, hit
Speaker 1: him early. Kind of a situation, right, So you guys
Speaker 1: should definitely keep this in mind the next time you
Speaker 1: get wind of a zombie attack in your neighborhood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: act fast, don't think so. Sadly, science takes a dive
Speaker 1: on that particular fight, and uh and zombies prevail well
Speaker 1: except with the eradication, but in three out of the
Speaker 1: four scenarios zombies do prevail that. I'm sorry, whoa oh
Speaker 1: Robert Smith, Yes, Robert Smith and Company. Hey, what do
Speaker 1: you got any listener mail going on? Uh? This little
Speaker 1: bit of listener mail comes from Christopher, and Christopher writes,
Speaker 1: in the interest of aiding you in your systematic research,
Speaker 1: I am writing to tell you that my cat mono,
Speaker 1: and there's a note here not named after a disease
Speaker 1: as most people initially assume. Think mono versus stereo. Um,
Speaker 1: not mono nucleosis as in the kissing disease. That would
Speaker 1: be that that could be a good kid. Um anyway, Um,
Speaker 1: Christopher says, says that mono also meets that's you know
Speaker 1: we're talking about when a cat makes them kind of noise.
Speaker 1: The kind of which podcast was that anygain? Uh? Scientific method?
Speaker 1: I think um anyway, Christopher says, However, we're we've always
Speaker 1: referred to this croaking sound as the quote dusty skeleton
Speaker 1: cat noise unquote. He does it when hungry, when he
Speaker 1: wants to be picked up and at the mocking birds
Speaker 1: that dive bomb on the very yard. But he gets
Speaker 1: his grizzly revenge on him every now and then, which
Speaker 1: means he eats him. Um. I hope this helps your
Speaker 1: reach that your translation. I hope this helps your research study.
Speaker 1: Thanks for the podcast, and hello to Allison ry Christopher.
Speaker 1: Thanks for writing. Yeah, so I think that wraps it up.
Speaker 1: But if you guys want to read more about Bigfoot
Speaker 1: and all of his crazy friends, he used to check
Speaker 1: out Hustbrooks dot com because we have a lot of
Speaker 1: articles on all of these creatures. Yeah. We have how
Speaker 1: big Foot Works by Tom Harris. We have how wearableves
Speaker 1: worked by Tracy B. Wilson. That's a good one. I'd
Speaker 1: like to read Tracy's on where well. She also wrote
Speaker 1: how ghost work and how zombies work as well. And uh,
Speaker 1: I would call Tracy as skeptic too. Yeah, a skeptic
Speaker 1: with an appreciation for, um, you know the fantastic too.
Speaker 1: Skeptic skepticism comes from a good place. Yeah, I agreed.
Speaker 1: It's not the same. It's very different from cynicism. So
Speaker 1: I don't want to talk to anybody's cynical about zombies.
Speaker 1: Just skeptic, Yeah, skeptical alright, So check out the site
Speaker 1: or hang out with us on Facebook or on Twitter.
Speaker 1: On Facebook, we're stuff from the Signs Lab. On Twitter,
Speaker 1: We're lab Stuff. So that's all we got for you, guys,
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. For more on this and thousands of
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